I have tried loading various versions of linux on my computer. The more recent ones are Fedora Core 6 + 7. None of them work. They will load to the boot os menu, then black screen of death. So I decided to try mandrake 10.1, because I thought maybe the problem was the others were simply too new. It gets to the installation screen, asks for my language preferences, asks me if ive read the license screen. When i push yes, it starts installing drivers. It will get to the loading driver for disk/ide/sata/hardware_raid/usb storage and freeze.

Are there any commands I can pass to the kernel prior to installation to stop this driver from loading?

My computer specs are
Sempron 3300+, 768MB RAM, trying to install on 13 GB HDD with linux ext3, ATI radeon 9550 pro powercolor 256 MB video, onboard USB/SOUND/PS/2 ports/serial/LPT

I'm sorry I don't have an answer to your question. But I do have a couple thoughts:

1. In general, newer distros will have better hardware support than older ones.

2. Live CD distros are a great way to explore hardware issues because you don't have to go through an installation before seeing if it works.

Therefore, may I suggest trying a "modern" and "mainstream" live CD such as Ubuntu, Knoppix, or PCLinuxOS (or mandriva One for that matter).

Sorry I can't be of more help, but best of luck!

I thought about the problem, and since my friend had just finished downloading openSUSE 10.2, I installed that, and it worked fine. Now, my problem is as such: I wrote an extremely basic C++ program to test the compiler. Just a basic hello world. It compiled fine with no errors, but I can't get the a.out file to execute. Any ideas?

You probably didn't make it "executable", ls -l /path/to/a.out to check.
To make it executable: chmod +x /path/to/a.out
To run it: /path/to/a.out or ./a.out if it is in the same directory that you are.